Hani Al-Hassoun(1)* and Fayez Al-Mikdad (2)
(1). Socio-Economics, General Commission of Scientific Agricultural Research, Administration of Economic and Social Studies Research, Damascus, Syria.
(2). Socio-Economics, Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, Damascus, Syria.
(*Correspondence author: Dr. Hani Al-Hassoun, E.mail:Sehany2009@gmail.com).
Received: 4/01/2023 Accepted: 25/01/2023
Abstract:
The study was conducted in Hama Governorate, second stability zone, during agricultural season (2017/2018), relied on primary data for a simple random sample consisted of 400 farmers, and secondary data for the time series (2004-2018). Aimed to reach optimal winter cropping pattern which minimizes water use, using Operations Research Methodology. The results showed that reaching optimal winter pattern that achieves the lowest optimal use of water in agriculture, within the constraints of water and land resources, in addition to; preserving the diversity of prevalent winter crops production in the research area, requires reducing areas of anise, golden winter onions, garlic, cumin, spring potatoes, beans and chickpeas by (79%), (73%), (65%), (22%), (15%), (12%), (6%) respectively. In favor of increasing wheat and barley areas by (85%), (42%) over their average areas during (2016-2018), and excluding all other winter crops areas. The results of comparison with prevailing cropping pattern also showed that the optimal pattern requires larger quantities of water by (48.03%) than quantities of water for the prevailing pattern, because of increasing the area of optimal by (41.6%) over prevailing. And the production cost of the optimal cropping pattern is greater by (34.17%) than prevailing one, in contrast, the optimal cropping pattern achieves an increase of (30.41%), (27.32%) in total production value and net profit, compared with the prevailing cropping pattern during the period (2016-2018).
Keywords: Operation Research, Liner Programming, Simplex, Optimal Cropping Pattern, Hama
Full paper in Arabic: pdf